Half-Year Portfolio Report
For the seven or so readers who are interested in Guido’s financial market trading (and you seem intensely interested) here is the half-year report.
The portfolio was up 30.6% at the half-way mark for the year, not too shabby considering the FTSE was off some 10% over the same period. Currently up 46% Year-To-Date.
It has been up as much as 60%. Alas when trading is going well, Guido pushes his luck – too much. God knows what the Sharpe ratio is, but basically this is a small amount of capital over-leveraged (up to 20 times) in the futures markets. With regular 10% swings in net asset value daily, this volatility is not for widows and orphans. When it is going badly Guido de-leverages. Two big hits were betting heavily gold would break out over $1000 (it didn’t) and selling into the recent gilt spike and getting stopped out. Have decided to leave gold alone because of prospective IMF selling, still playing the gilt market from the short side. Am basically flat, short or double short gilts for the forseeable future.
In the last six months Guido has had 33 positions. Mrs Fawkes thinks that since blogging is not as lucrative as the bond market she would very much rather that Guido went back to professional bond trading and amateur blogging rather than the other way round. You never know…
I’d be stoked with that!
well played guido , will this site close when you go away or will someone be minding the shop ?
Would that not be a case of lunatics running the asylum? No wait O/T thinking of present cabinet……
thick as thieves will be put in charge.
He’s not even in charge of his own bowels.
Switched articles and dates – ‘keyboard monkeying’ – seems Guido’s site is being ‘minded’ ….
Whoever’s ‘minding the shop’ is grossly misrepresenting Guido’s readership figures.
http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/919673/Tesco-Personal-Finance-marketing-director-Paulette-Rowe-leaves/
Not so fast Guido!
Before you dissapear off into the sunset with Mrs Guido to the maison deuxieme…
Have any of your investments been associated with this little item above?
I’m curious about this benny chap now on wife number 4.
Wasn’t he the dozy mechanic from Crossroads with the greasy hat?
Or was he the one from the Montreal “Boiler Room” operations in Canada?
Just curious as to why this lovely looking gal Paulette would leave that position.
maybe Jonah Brown visited and commended her work!
One more reason for me to adore you.
You are a very wonderful. rich genius.
Would be great for me and all the other assholes that post here to see pictures of you with some money, holding it, waving it, handfuls stuffed down your swimming trunks?
Watch Goldman Sachs, they “play” the Gold market which is why most other players get caught out.
o/t … Are you on LBC this morning?
Thanks for reminding Guido.
Making a mint on the exchanges cannot be nearly as satisfying as watching the likes of Draper, McBride and Brown squirm and wriggle their way into obscurity – surely?
Take it the piss up is in Londonistan?
I bet the Kama Sutra’s got more positions than that.
Time to catch up a bit.
Mrs Fawkes thinks that since blogging is not as lucrative as the bond market she would very much rather that Guido went back to professional bond trading and amateur blogging rather than the other way round
Err, yes… Mrs News made a similar point at the weekend…)
Incidentally, why has Kevin Maguire taken to attacking Mandelson?
Maguire attacks Mandelson, Brown is still toitally aloof from the situations HE caused
Mrs. Grumpy has long held that position. Mind you, she holds that position about Soccer, Rugby, the Bass guitar, Weather Report, the vegetable patch, the Pub, fishing…………
You could give a job to an unemployed person as guest editor here. The name of Derek Draper springs to mind.
Speaking of whom, it appears his career as a therapist (trained in Berkeley) has come to an end. His ‘professional’ sites are both offline.
http://www.diy-therapy.com
http://www.derekdraper.net
Shame.
Or possibly ‘thick as thieves’….
or alan shearer
Shat the bed again?
what a waste
Derek Draper got a taxpayer-funded non-job with the department of education (or whatever it’s called this month.)
Wasn’t that McBride?
I think Dolly’s probably playing househusband now, as his wife’s on 6 figures for GMTV
yes. Or writing a book “coping with that midlife crisis (when it becomes crystal clear you’ll be a git all your life)”.
“Six figures” refers to the possible number of alternate fathers for the wee mite in waiting.
Some parallels here with order-order in that reactionary media can take you so far, so fast, like a fireworks rocket.
The longevity of media is built over a considerable period of time and its life is proportional to the time and attention in creating its output.
If I were you, I would seek an exit soon. A simple 3-year earn-out could be a lot of fun. A financial blog would not be a conflict of interest.
Regards,
Tom
These days it is the left that is reactionary, clinging to a discredited belief system that was designed in the 19th century as a response to the Industrial Revolution.
My own portfolio is up 130% since February selling Naked Puts on stocks that that were disproportionately punished (based on their cash position) using Fibonacci retrenchment to predict with some accuracy how they would rebound. It wasn’t difficult. You had to be a numb-skull NOT to make a lot of money.
You made a big mistake in gold. You will make even bigger mistakes with your over-simplified approach to investing. For the sake of your children, liquidate and put your cash into CDs or Inflation-Protected Treasuries.
Regards,
Tom
Where is the fun in TIPs? Actually advised my father to do exactly that. Just as would advise everyone to fix their mortgages now. Rates are not going lower…
This is risk money – it wouldn’t change Guido’s life if it was all lost.
The comforting thing about complicated approaches to investing is that you always have better explanations for why you lost money.
BTW selling naked puts opens you up to theoretically infinite losses for premium limited gain, as you probably understand in theory. Why didn’t you just by the stocks on margin if you were that bullish? Did you think the risk was over-priced?
No, a Naked Put has limited gain and limited risk. It’s selling insurance with a cap on the claim. It’s not like selling a Naked Call.
I agree to buy the stock if it falls in price. In return I get the premium. I hold no stocks, just a stockpile of cash to cover the purchase should the price fall.
If I am assigned, I usually sell. The max loss is the stock going to zero (I only choose equities with a healthy balance sheet). If the stock rockets, I lose the upside but keep the premium.
All I need is the stock to stay the same or go up or even go down a little (~10%) over a month and I win. 80% of options expire worthless. I learned this 10 years ago and decided to start selling them.
Put it this way, if I get less than 10% growth per month, I slap on my cilice.
Regards,
Tom
As for me? My Equitable Life pension fund lost money over the past year. Bugger it.
Bernard Madoff, as I live and breathe! A couple of suggestions:
1. use of the internet connection at Butner Federal Correctional Complex to solicit clients is likely to have you serving another ten years in chokey. Remember – 150 years is a very long time to be away from your friends and loved ones, so just think about how much worse 160 years would be, sunshine.
2. Stop calling yourself Tom.
I hesitate to write in what might appear to be a defence of Madoff, but it really isn’t.
Madoff’s straddle-strategy (on paper) could produce 1-2% monthly returns reliably if you had the freedom to get in and out of positions at will with total freedom on the choice of equity options without a Compliance Officer breathing down your neck screaming ‘Asset Allocation Matrix!, Dow Only!, Russell Only!”.
Unfortunately it’s hard work and maybe he took the easy route.
I’ll stick my neck out on a Naked Put. Sell 100 contracts of Blackstone August $7 PUTs. for 20c/share. Pocket $2,000 immediately – yours to spend, book that holiday you wanted etc..
Blackstone (Mkt Cap= Equity=$2.5bn) is at $9.48. It has to drop to $7 before you start to lose your $2,000 gain and it has to drop to $6.79 (-30%) before you start losing money overall. Very conservative. (I wouldn’t do it, I have a more aggressive strategy than 3% per month).
Regards,
Bernie
Of course, if it drops to $5 you’re cattle-trucked.
Good advice though, Bernie, and delighted you’ve emerged from the closet (?cell?).
No I’m not. It has to drop to $5 and stay there forever to be a problem.
Regards,
Prisoner 61727-054
Hi Tom – which platform do you use?
Rgds,
Mark
I have a US E*Trade Account (Pro) but a bunch of Option Pricing Formulae customised over many years. There are better (Thinkorswim.com gets great reviews).
I believe the European E*Trade platform supports US Equity Options.
Do not trade European Options. Fixed-term and mostly illiquid.
A good options online tutorial and a good book that helped me start off many years ago.
Regards,
Tom (aka Bernie)
More joined up government
Ed Miliband promises renewable energy but won’t adapt planning regs to keep UK’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer in business.
Vestas to close with 600 jobs gone. Even Hattie’s husband Dromey thinks it nuts.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6710815.ece
China can make them for 1/3 of the price.
No business has a right to support from any other in order to survive.
Sentimentality and putting need before ability is killing this country.
Germany is the world leader in wind turbine technology.
It’s not a labour cost issue.
This business is a parasite.
like a bank
It was an ill wind which started in Denmark.
It was a silly idea which started in Denmark.
Better.
Wind power is not the answer, for many reasons. It is unfortunate that the current government has been so slow to reach obvious conclusions with regard to the nation’s electricity generating policy.
Currently (no pun intended) the installed capacity is approximately 40% gas-fired, 30% coal-fired, 20% nuclear, and 7% hyrdo-electric, with the remaining 3% made up of various odds and ends such as wind.
Given that the load factor for wind generators is low (about 25% on average), an average wind turbine rated at 3MW (that is – capable of generating 3 megawatts of electricity when working at full capacity) the average delivered to the grid is about 0.75MW. The average coal-fired station is rated at about 2000MW (e.g. Fiddler’s Ferry near Warrington – Drax is rated at 4400MW) and operate on a load factor of about 75%, so it delivers about 1500MW to the grid.
So you need about 2000 wind turbines to equal one major coal-fired station, leaving aside the fact that wind turbines do nothing when the wind isn’t blowing.
By all means have some wind turbines, they’ll make a contribution, but never a large one. They won’t even come close to solving the whole problem.
thats heavy reading at this time lad
Oi Freddie – how’s the knee looking? Hope you’ve been resting the last couple of days??
Sorry, Fred – I know. I have to live my life with this stuff, and heavier!
It’s important that people do have some understanding of what is done on their behalf by engineers and by business, and we have not been very good at expaining all the problems and the immense amount of effort that goes into getting electricity into people’s homes and businesses. Only then can people influence the government to make sensible decisions about our future energy policy.
The present government has ducked the problems for 12 years, there is no excuse for this, the problems have been well understood by engineers and the electricity generating industry for many, many years. Only very recently have they acknowledged that wind power won’t solve the problems, and we need to update and replace our major power generators.
50/50 lad
Quite. The experience in Denmark, a windy country with a powerful Green lobby, has been that wind power supplies electricity at a only a small fraction of its notional capacity, often at the wrong times. They have not been able to close or mothball a single power station.
There are 6 working watermills within 5 miles of my house, non producing electricity. Non of the 3 main parties have demonstrated a real intention to resolve the looming energy crisis, Labour just talk a load of shit on the issue, leaving the next incumbents of No10 to deal with it. Charles, Labour have proved in 12 years that they are the real do nothing party, and whatever you are briefed to dribble on this blog, no one else has been in power for the last 12 years.
Oh, you must be very very old to have had anything to do with Graphic Fidelity, yesterdays technology from yesterdays people
Why do no politicians have the guts to say that the nuclear option is the only one left?
The fuel is plentiful and the technology is now safe, the waste products are better than they used to be and the supply of the stuff is not controlled by politically volatile second-world countries that we have to go to war with on a regular basis.
Existing sites can be utilised without too much NIMBY-ism but we need to make the decisions now because of the timescales in planing and building.
To those opposed, would you like to see old nuclear plants running past their retiirement date, or efficient new ones – or power cuts in the winter as we had 30 years ago..??
You’re about right, Steve; we are making a start – of sorts – on replacing oyr ageing nuclear stations, albeit about 15 years too late.
Obviously, cutting energy consumption would be good – but it’s easier to say than achieve.
We need a good mix of power stations: nuclear, modern coal-fired (I don’t like the misleading term ‘clean coal’ – if you burn coal you make carbon dioxide, and the deep storage idea is at best unproven), some gas, perhaps more larger-scale hydro-electric, and a push to try and develop and deploy cost-effective renewables. The latter is tricky, because they are all more expensive than fossil fuels and nuclear at the moment. Fusion offers another possible method, but it has been 30 years from commercial reality for as long as I can remember, and still is.
All methods of power generation have advantages and disadvantages, and we have to work with what is possible, not with what an idealogical and bigotted government minister would like to be possible.
To bridge the renewables/fusion development gap, our best options are coal and nuclear.
Quite. Denmark is a windy country with a powerful Green lobby and they have gone for windmills in a much bigger way than the UK. They find that the average output from these windmills is only a small fraction of their capacity and often peaks at the wrong times. They have not been able to close or mothball a single power station and must keep some of these on standby, wastefully burning fossil fuels night and day, in case the wind drops.
Nuclear power offers an effective, green solution good enough for the next 100 years, until we find something better, but is resisted for reasons of religion and pride.
Nuclear power offers an effective, green solution good enough for the next 100 years, until we find something better, but is resisted for reasons of religion and pride
Nuclear power is safe. so long as you ignore the plight of the uranium miners, environmental impact of the mines, the threat of terrorism, etc.
I didn’t say nuclear power was perfectly safe. It is very much safer than coal mining (5,000 deaths a year in China alone) or, if you believe the CO2 lobby, oil or gas. It is a million times safer than running out of power, at which point most of us would die.
Absolutely agree Sir William – and nothing on the planet is totally safe.
The terrorism card is overplayed, as well. Terrorists seem to manage appalling atrocities without involving the difficulties (for them) of handling nuclear materials. Yes – we must keep on top of nuclear security, but don’t exaggerate the possibilities in relation to the equally horrible non-nuclear ones.
Wind power is AN answer, not the answer.
Correct – but it’s not, unfortunately, a particularly significant answer.
Eat more beans. There’ll be no shortage of wind then.
Or site some turbines by Westminster.
Fossil fuels currently provide the bulk of energy demanded by APEC economies and are projected to continue to do so over the period to 2050.
Under a continuation of current policy settings, sources of energy supply for the APEC region in 2050 are estimated to be:
• *coal 29 per cent,
• *oil 31 per cent,
• *gas 25 per cent,
• Nuclear 9 per cent,
• Hydroelectricity 2 per cent; and
• Biomass and other renewables 4 per cent.
You could not make it up, how has it come to this?
Guido, on alert with eyes ready for SUNLIGHT COPS……..
Guido, Up 30% when the FSTE was 10% off is a pretty good deal over six months!
Perhaps you could share some tips and tricks with us amateur traders a little more often, makes an occasional change from the usual policical stories?
Hope little Miss Fawkes is feeling better now, enjoy your summer holiday and fingers crossed we will see an election in the autumn!
steve lad will this site close down or will someone else run it?
Last year he carried on, if a little less prolific than usual. I’m sure he’ll be keeping his eye out as always for anything of interest…
cheers lad could guido confirm or deny this ?
Mandleson was on Sky this morning. He said there would be constraints in public spending but wouldn’t say exactly where. He did say several times how the conservatives would take an axe to public spending, whilst Labour was still looking after the ordinary people.
The Sky reporter said twice that Mandleson had not answered his question about where these constraints would be, but Mandleson still said that the choice at the next election would be between Labour funding and conservative cuts.
Sky should have pushed this further, but Mandleson talked such rubbish that time ran out.
has any mp or minister ever answered aquestion ?
Well, let me see, I think the answer to the question you should have asked is “yes … and no”
Have you guys read Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger and Yaro Starak’s entrepreneurs-journey blog on blogging?
Riveting stuff……
Tell Mrs Guido that there is more to life than money and that you need to continue to focus on ‘good works’ viz-a-viz publicising the excesses of our political masters and their bum boys the MSM.
If that doesn’t work, tell her that working from home on your blog shields you from the predatory females who work in the City.
If that doesn’t work tell her you’re thinking of taking up religion.
If that doesn’t work then we’re screwed – please don’t consign us to the dustbin of Toenail’s blog
I understood the words “blogging” and “gold”. The rest was just a bunch of random words.
:-)
same here lad
freddie. Whats the news conference about? Are you coming out?
If the majority of our MP’s had your skill, luck and judgement then the UK would not be in the mess it is.
Instead we have 29,000 “politicians” costing us £1.5 billion pa who are fundamentally useless and hopeless creaming the State.
Make enough Guido and clear out. Remember £10m sounds a lot but it doesn’t last that long especially after paying tax on anything and everything.
Wherever you go ensure there are no socialists there for they will thieve from you.
W
When all this nonsense of MP’s expenses is over will not be over to Heads roll.
Sooo happy to see in todays Mail that there is to be another attempt at a private Prosecution agains Jackboot Jacqui. This time by Christopher Galley the heroic
whistle blower in the Damian Green arrest fiasco.
Come on all you Galley slaves show some support.
Guido beat me hands down last year, which was mightily irritating. however, at 155% up on the year so far I feel happier now. However, my line in punting on recovery play stocks is probably a bit riskier, even with his leverage.
CU
I’m betting on the number of people who will die of Swine Flu.
I could really make a killing in this recession.
Off topic I know, but I love this clip of ‘oor Bob
http://diack.co.uk/fitaloon/2007/10/bob-ainsworth-stuffed-by-paxo/
“becooouuuurseeee”
Coventry’s own version of Magnum P.I.
Silly wanka
‘Elicopters he mentioned 3 times in a minute yesterday. Thanks for the reminder Anonymous
Ainsworth goes into a pub and asks for some ‘elicopter crisps. The barman says he’s only got plane.
Samuel Pepys seemed to be able to do both very well – screw Fawkes, you should model yourself on him instead.
Indeed his diary for yesterday read:
“Up betimes to the office, to write fair a laborious letter I wrote as from the Board to the Duke of Yorke, laying out our want of money again; and particularly the business of Captain Cocke’s tenders of hemp, which my Lord Bruncker brought in under an unknown hand without name. Wherein his Lordship will have no great successe, I doubt. That being done, I down to Thames-streete, and there agreed for four or five tons of corke, to send this day to the fleete, being a new device to make barricados with, instead of junke. By this means I come to see and kiss Mr. Hill’s young wife, and a blithe young woman she is. So to the office and at noon home to dinner, and then sent for young Michell and employed him all the afternoon about weighing and shipping off of the corke, having by this means an opportunity of getting him 30 or 40s. Having set him a doing, I home and to the office very late, very busy, and did indeed dispatch much business, and so to supper and to bed. After a song in the garden, which, and after dinner, is now the greatest pleasure I take, and indeed do please me mightily, to bed, after washing my legs and feet with warm water in my kitchen. This evening I had Davila brought home to me, and find it a most excellent history as ever I read.”
I particularly liked the bit about Mr Hill’s young wife.
Just over a year ago I read an article by an Americna in the Lew Rockwell Column, that a spread of investments were just put out by stockbrokers trying to cover themselves and that it is best to have just a few investments but only in the area of business that one knows very, very well.
I tried this with Google Finance, but with ficticious shares and turned £4,000 into £28,000 in just over a year. I am now trying to summons up tyhe courage to do it for real.
But you know, dear reader, and I know, what works with fun money does not and will not work with real money :-)
Ampers.
harumph.
got my equitable life pension statement yesterday.
Overall funds DOWN 31%
Guido
If you have time in your busy schedule please read my gold blog with daily analysis of gold price: http://www.spot-gold-price.org. Keep up the good work!
Anna
[...] Half-Year Portfolio Report – Guy Fawkes' blog [...]
houses built on sand eh?
sounds like you don’t want to accept any responsibility at all.
you offer no value to the market, you are merely a drain upon it that causes inflational.
you have described a ponzi scheme. that is your pitch. all reward and no risk.
President Obama is quite right to tax at 90% the bonuses of all employees of companies reliant on taxpayers money to stay solvent.
all of your waffle is based upon taxpayers money you cretin.
your trades a mere fantasies, the death rattle of a failed economic model.
what a lunatic.